MarCO Flight Hardware 2

One of the two MarCO (Mars Cube One) CubeSat spacecraft is seen at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

The briefcase-size MarCO twins were designed to ride along with NASA's next Mars lander, InSight. Its planned March 2016 launch was suspended.

InSight -- an acronym for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport -- will study the interior of Mars to improve understanding of the processes that formed and shaped rocky planets, including Earth.

The MarCO and InSight projects are managed for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, by JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

Note: After thorough examination, NASA managers have decided to suspend the planned March 2016 launch of the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission. The decision follows unsuccessful attempts to repair a leak in a section of the prime instrument in the science payload.